


we are here, alive, against all odds

by EllaYuki



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Lucy POV, Pre-Epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11889540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaYuki/pseuds/EllaYuki
Summary: the war is over, and in the immediate aftermath, lucy (and natsu and happy, too, for that matter) can’t sleep.





	we are here, alive, against all odds

the war is over. it’s over, finally, and bruises and scrapes and cuts aside, they’re all mostly alive and well.

and when he falls from the sky, like summer rain after a drought, like an angel, like a meteor, she feels like she can finally breathe again. her entire body hurts (from so many fights, from his falling into her, from the drain on her magic), but her heart has never felt lighter.

~

that night, when she’s finally back in her room, back in her bed, at long last able to rest, sleep eludes her.

she doesn’t understand why, she’s exhausted, she’s sleepy as hell and all to ready to let oblivion take her for the next week or so, but no matter how much she tosses and turns and tries, she’s still awake long past midnight.

at one point, she just gives up, just lays on her back and looks at her darkened ceiling, and lets her thoughts wander wherever they would.

(she goes over the fights, the pain, the plans that worked and those that didn’t, she tries not to think of what dimaria almost did to her, and she tries not to think about how she almost lost natsu for good this time.

she thinks of what she should do next. she wants to write another book, she wants to go find aquarius’ key, she wants to… well, there are many things she wants to do.)

she’s so caught up in possible plans for the future that she almost misses when one of her windows opens, and two silhouettes enter her room.

she’s already reaching for her whip when she realizes just who her midnight intruders are.

‘really, you two, can’t i get one night of peace and quiet without you two breaking into my apartment?’ she asks, tone filled with as much exasperation as she can muster. ‘i should kick you two out and cast some shield spells around my windows. that might keep out uninvited guests.’

she reaches over for her bedside lamp and turns on the light. it’s not much, the glow is low, soothing, just enough to see, but not enough to hurt eyes accustomed to darkness.

natsu and happy, when she can finally see them, look worse than when they left for their house hours ago. they look as tired as she feels, maybe worse, and ready to collapse. the soft light casts shadows on natsu’s face that make him look like he might just disappear, and it’s what both settles and unsettles lucy.

she sighs, pulls up a corner of her comforter. ‘come on, then. get in,’ she tells them, and he can see the way they both let out a breath of something like relief. she wonders if they had the same problem falling asleep that she had.

happy flies over and plops himself in the corner of the bed between lucy’s pillow and the wall, and he’s out in seconds. lucy smiles, pets him lightly between the ears, and is careful not to wake him up.

when she looks back up to natsu, he’s just standing there, by her bed, looking at her with a complicated expression on his face that lucy can’t decipher.

‘natsu?’ she asks quietly. it seems to snap him out of whatever he’d been caught up in in his head and he takes off his scarf and pants. for some reason, she finds it a bit weird (always, not just now) when she sees him in something as casual as a normal t-shirt and boxers. she can’t put her finger on why, though.

he sits on the edge of the bed, and his shoulders slump forward. he sighs.

‘i almost died today,’ he says, and lucy wants to tell him that it wouldn’t be the first time, that it wouldn’t even be the first time _these past few days_. she doesn’t, so he goes on. ‘you almost died, too. i actually thought you were dead at one point.’

she frowns at that, confused, but then she remembers dimaria, and she remembers waking up to find the spriggan lying in torn, terrified heap, and she wonders what those moments were like for natsu.

‘i woke up,’ he carries on, ‘and you were tied to a chair and she was trying to hurt you and everything felt slow, like time was standing still and i couldn’t move fast enough to stop her.’

‘natsu…’ she whispers, and touches his shoulder lightly.

‘and then you weren’t moving, you weren’t breathing, and i’ve never felt so overwhelmed by the need to kill, to rip someone to shreds with my bare hands.’

‘i saw the way you left her,’ lucy says in the quiet of the night. ‘and you couldn’t tell i was breathing because she’d slowed time down around us. i was okay though.’ she moves closer, leans her forehead against his shoulder. ‘i’m okay.’

‘hmm,’ is the only thing he says and lucy nuzzles a bit closer. takes a breath. (he smells of ash.)

‘you disappeared,’ she says, barely a breath. he tilts his head towards her a bit but doesn’t say anything. ‘you were there, and then you weren’t, and i thought… i thought my rewriting of the book hadn’t been good enough, that our adventures, our time together hadn’t been enough to keep you from vanishing.’

slowly, she wraps her arms around his middle and presses her face into his neck. they’re both silent after that, contemplating everything they’ve almost lost in this war.

‘come on,’ she says, minutes, hours, eons later, ‘let’s try to sleep.’

she disentangles herself from natsu, and shuffles back a bit, makes room for him to lie down, and then turns off the light.

they lie there, facing each other in the darkness, and lucy feels something shift, change. she can’t tell what it is, exactly, a feeling maybe, but she knows that, whatever it is, it’s good.

carefully, she finds one of natsu’s hands and threads their fingers together.

she expects him to ask what she’s doing, maybe call her a weirdo, but he just squeezes her hand and says nothing.

she’s asleep in minutes after that.

~

when she wakes up, he’s snoring with his head on her shoulder, his whole body wrapped tightly around hers like she might disappear while he’s unconscious, and happy sleeping under her arm, paws clutching at her shirt.

she feels warm, and safe, and carefree, and loved, and can’t help the huge smile that spreads on her face.


End file.
